Young children and retarded persons often experience great difficulty in tying their shoelaces into bows. A major difficulty encountered by such persons is in holding one end portion of a shoelace in a loop configuration, while manipulating the other end portion as to form a second loop and wrap and thread the loops. My earlier Pat. No. 4,842,522 by Alexander and Stanfield describes the permanent fastening of VELCRO hook and loop elements to two parts of a shoelace end portion, so a child can bring the VELCRO elements together to maintain a first loop. However, applicant has found such VELCRO material not satisfactory. The hook element of the VELCRO material lying on a shoe, tends to pick up dirt, so it becomes messy. The added bulk of VELCRO elements can make shoelaces hard to thread through the eyelets of a shoe when installing them. Many children's shoes come with attractive laces of the proper length for tying that particular shoe, and it would be desirable if the original shoelace could be used while still providing help to a child or retarded person in tying a bow.